What happened to being cool?

Avril Lavigne. Luke Wilson. Whoopi Goldberg. Those three names don’t exactly jump out and immediately connect with us when we see them. And isn’t that the point of advertising? The point of branding? To connect to something, identify with it, and relate to it. Sure jazzy music and clean visuals (or dark, ominous tones with scary eyes) will help liven up your advertisement, but if you’re bringing a celebrity in to help, why don’t you make sure the celebrity is someone that people actually care about? I don’t mean to knock on Luke or Whoopi as I’m a fan of both (Canada can have Sk8ter chick), but while they might be intended to reach a certain demographic, in actuality they don’t help, they hurt. People pass it off as something they don’t care about. There’s no instant reaction or memorable moment that people will immediately remember or associate with any of those commercials.

Luke Wilson is brilliant. But he’s not relevant right now. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, he just isn’t as visible as he was a couple years back. Once he has a bang up movie come out, I’m sure we’ll all care again, but right now, we don’t. And to pick Luke Wilson to carry your entire ad campaign is mind-shattering and stupid. Of all the people in the world, that’s the best your agency came up with? How about Ben Affleck? He would have killed it. Hell, Matt Damon would have, too, and all he wants to do is help kids (NSFW). What, too expensive? Even if AT&T spent $10M in talent alone for awesome brand ambassadors, that’s still not too much to spend when you need to defend your network against the largest, and most solid network in the country with some of the smartest attack ads ever played. People want to root for their hometeam, their city, their favorite company, and AT&T doesn’t give them a chance to do so. No one is going to stick up for Luke Wilson’s commercials.

Either of those two aforementioned people would have been funnier, more personable, and could actually strengthen brand opinion in a time when you needed slam dunk ad rebuttals.

I love AT&T. I really do. I love the flexibility I get with switching phones, I love that the technology that I care about is 99.99% always going to be GSM-based. I honestly don’t have that many issues with AT&T and think people really blow certain issues they encounter out of proportion. But it isn’t about what I think, it’s about mind share and people’s opinions. People that aren’t glued to the internet. Verizon was incredibly smart to start their Map For That campaign. It made people question their cell phone service provider much like we’d question if the last Avril Lavigne song we could remember was really from the year 2002.

Never before has anyone really attacked networks like Verizon did. It was always about the phone itself. My phone can MMS, my phone can browse the web, my phone can work anywhere in the world. But Verizon hit hard and said it doesn’t matter if you have an amazing cell phone, your network is shit and it won’t work where or when you want it to. T-Mobile also isn’t earning cool points while their subscribers continue to leave because their phones have gotten so bad and their brand is getting diluted as there’s no clear strategy. Get More? Come on. Motorola CLIQ? They’d be lucky if they moved 175,000 of those things since release. Behold II? The BlackBerry 9700 is the only thing T-Mobile has right now and that isn’t even a conquest device as AT&T offers it, so it’s a wash. Bring on the awesome ads that will make people stay on your network, ads that really connect with us and make us say, “You know what, I like T-Mobile, I’m going to ride this out.” It was a mistake getting rid of Catherine Zeta Jones, an amazing, beautiful, personable, and strong celebrity. It was also a mistake bringing her back. Why? Because no one cares. It’s an afterthought now.

T-Mobile is becoming the new Sprint.

What do we get for T-Mobile’s ads? Avril Lavigne, Whoopi Goldberg, Jesse James, and other people I’m not even going to bother tearing apart. T-Mobile’s myTouch celebrity picks are mind-numbing. The first ones were bad, but they at least sort of made sense from a marketing perspective. Whoopi Goldberg, Phil Jackson, and Jesse James appealed to three very different demographics but the problem was no one who needed to care, cares about any of them. No one went out and bought a myTouch because of Whoopi, Phil, or Jesse. It didn’t happen. Did stay at home moms see Whoopi and say, “I’m going to buy a myTouch”? Nope. Did people buy a myTouch because they saw Phil Jackson and thought, “OMG. The back of my phone can look like a basketball”? Nope. Did people buy the myTouch because Jesse James just looks like a bad ass? Maybe.

In all seriousness, the phone is what’s going to sell if you don’t have anyone that’s memorable, and that’s really the point of what I’m saying. If you’re going to do it, knock it out the park, don’t Luke Wilson it. AT&T could have done countless other things to rebut Verizon’s attacks and they didn’t have to involve a celebrity that we don’t connect with. T-Mobile is grasping at straws with their ads of the amazingly stupid-named myTouch with celebrities that we don’t care about. They’re both wasted campaigns that miss the mark by suits in marketing that obviously have no idea who they’re trying to sell to anymore. Me, you, your parents, your friends — we’re the potential customers, and we’re not stupid. Plus we’re cool.

I would buy a phone that I could customize it to specifically express my own style, and that is why I loved Avril Lavigne being in this, for me she was the prefect person for this, few express there own unique style as Avril. Like her or not I think you completely missed the point of the campaign, or your simple to old to get it. But seriously it was not that hard to figure out, duh!

Sean M

It’s simple, Avril Lavigne is a niche celebrity. As BG pointed out, there are three niche’s filled by that commercial, the Basketball/Lakers fan (Phil Jackson), the tweeners(Avril Lavigne, although they should have went with a twilight character like Taylor Benson if they really wanted to fill this niche), and Jesse James (has a dedicated rouge following, again he’s not really in the mainstream spotlight right now but has a larger dedicated fanbase than Avril). Good Idea to fill niches, poor choice of people and demonstration.

Dee

I have to disagree that you think Avril Lavigne is a niche market; Avril has more fan based websites dedicated to her than any other pop/rock artist on the internet, not to mention she has sold more than 30 million albums by the ripe old age of 23. I’d say you defeat you own argument by naming “Taylor Benson” as a better choice, I even tried Googling “Taylor Benson” but it is still not clear to me or my roommate who he is. So I would say you clearly don’t have a grasp on who is, and who is not, a good choice of people for this campaign. I am quite sure they did extensive market research to determine which people would make good choice for this campaign, rather than rely on someone such as you, to make this decision for them. I think if they had relied on your determinations they would likely go out of business.

Sean M

I’m sorry, I meant Taylor Lautner, the one I stated is a friend. Yes Lavigne did sell 30 million albums, agreed, however, she is now 25 not 23, my point was that she is out of the spotlight now. Two years ago she was a hot artist, right now she’s not. Not to discredit Lavigne, she is a wonderful artist. That was my point, someone who is in the spotlight and is hot right now is going to be a better choice than someone who was hot two years ago, as Luke Wilson is.

Dee

OK, I see your point to a degree, but Avril Lavigne has a new album coming out very soon and a single off the new album is likely going to be released in January according to a number of people reporting on Avril; and this album is slated to be more like her ‘first and second’ albums and this album is supposed to more based on feelings and emotion according to Rolling Stone, so perhaps they are banking on the fact that Avril will be likely be hot again very soon.

Sean M

I know what you’re saying, and I can see that working, but the ad was released a while ago. Perhaps they should have waited until she released it.

Evan

I think it’s more weak ad campaigning than anything. Verizon’s ads were clearly attacking how poor AT&T’s 3G coverage was, and AT&T tried to confuse people by having come back commercials that show a map of how great their PHONE service is.

NOT the same thing AT&T!

Also, the commercials just seemed weak and threw together trying to save face.

Onyx

Ummm… AT&T is a bullshit company. Get over it. Complaining about mediocre phones? Buy an unlocked one. Don’t like the celeb a company bought off, don’t watch the commercials. You’re whining is entirely superficial. Worry about how good you service is, how many minutes you have, if your bill is right, etc. I mean, seriously, you really care that much about the commercials. Who flippin cares?

P.S. You’re not cool. We cellphone geeks aren’t ever cool because most people don’t care. If it makes calls, that’s what they care about.

Are you sure about that? The At&t fan-nuts all stated the opposite. Said that there were ton of people who are too stupid to understand the ‘Maps for That’ ads. Alleged At&t employees came here to comment about the whopping influx of dumb customers who asked questions after seeing the VZW ad. Seriously… one, maybe 2 customers a day, that’s pretty horrible, isn’t it? What a huge indicator of the stupidity of the masses, isn’t it? No, no, you’re wrong BGR: We are all stupid, that’s why they used the star of ‘Idiocracy’. That’s what At&t wants you to know.

But you are right, Chevy Chase and Dana Carvey don’t keep me on T-mobile. Good pricing and Flawless service (yep, I said it… coverage might suck, but at least the service is always solid AND when do I go out of my covered service area? Rarely) is what sells me on T-mobile. I know some people want to bitch and bitch about T-mobile, but I’m not sorry that it sucks for you. All I know is it works for me, my friends, and my family… and that’s all I really care about at the end of the day.

Sean M

What I meant was that there are a lot of customers that don’t understand what 3G is, it’s trickery on Verizon’s part. They know people don’t know what 3G is and they take advantage of that by comparing their map to At&t’s. Very intelligent marketing on Verizon’s part. The amount of people that came into my store and asked for the ‘iPhone 3 Gigs’ was enormous. I’m not talking one or two a day, we’re talking 5-7 on weekdays and 6-10 on weekend days. Multiply that by thousands of sales locations and the ones who don’t buy at dealers that didn’t have to ask if they had it. If you’ve ever worked in the retail cellular sales industry you know the look you get when you say a phone has 3G. The customers are not stupid, don’t twist my words, I said they were UNINFORMED, not stupid, and I don’t want to say ignorant because that implies stupidity and uneducated in general.

BGR Fanboyz

fusionz – you nailed it.

I think BGR and his personal fanboys are nothing but entertainment.

JakeyBoy

keep the minutes you don’t use…DROID DOESN’T

Matt

Personally I use the same amount of minutes every month and I never go over. So what would be the point of having 3,000 rollover minutes? It’s a nice gimmick, but if you’re on top of your shit, you don’t need it.

JakeyBoy

point being you can actually not ever worry about being overcharged. its like having that overdraft protection on your bank account. every wireless provider should let you keep the minutes you pay for, regardless.

Joe Cool

Bring on Frank the Tank!!!

Blurmotions

Stupid… BGR, this is one hell of a shitty post. Keep to what you know, the tech.

http://jreckseidler.posterous.com Jreckseidler

Luke Wilson was just the icing on the cake. The retort to VZ’s clever and well-executed Map strategy was weak. At best. Especially the mis-guided lawsuit, which is the corporate equivalent of running to tell your mom that kids were bugging you about your nose, when you have a funny looking nose. Not much anyone can do about it, is there?

Since when did ads on TV really matter to people who read blogs like this? Cause I’m sure we don’t rely on TV ads for the purchase of our cell phones. We research information about the carrier, their prices, their phones, and then make a decision based on our choice. TV ads target a consumer, but people who read blogs such as this would know more about cell phones and actually research them.

john doe

Get Ben Affleck or Matt Damon? Get serious. That is some very wishful thinking. Those two would never subject themselves to appearing in a cellphone advertisements created as a response to Verizon’s attacks, no matter how much they were offered.

Nate

Let’s not forget that Verizon did the Droid campaign with ZERO celebrities. I suppose that’s how Apple goes about it, as well.

The thing I loved about the Droid campaign from the very beginning was that Verizon knew that they weren’t going to top Apple/AT&T at their own game, so they approached it from a totally different perspective:

The iPhone is marketed as simple, attractive, and user-friendly. Verizon decided to market the droid as a totally different kind of device: Forget style, you want power and features.

I just love how Verizon went into this campaign. It was a no-holds-barred counter-attack, and it seems to be working thus far.

Prophet

Does anyone still buy a phone based on the network??that is so 2001!!!lol.
Recent poll shows in 2009 it’s all about the best smartphone regardless of network. I wonder y iPhone IS still most desirable smartphone ?
Only phone that can completely replace an iPod touch.

Prophet

Remember AT&T has triple amount of smartphone customers than verizon. Now is that a rape n ownage or what. Truth hurts. Exactly. So is it the network. Lol!!
Get with the times y’all ,,iPhone still outsold droid in November. Reality check.

Prophet

It’s clear that America doesn’t care about 3g coverage in Montana or north Dakota, lol!!!!
Hence iPhone sold 7 million iPhones in last 3 months. Truth is that verizon has lost respect by mentioning iPhone in last 3-4 ads. Verizon has zero class n will never have iPhone. Guaranteed.

Prophet

After I saw is there a map for that ad. I went out n bought 4 iPhones. Cuz ad reminded me of iPhone. Lol!!!!

Hmm…

So Ben Affleck is less of a joke than Luke Wilson? Seriously? Luke Wilson has a good delivery in those commercials. The only think Affleck is delivering is pizzas. Meanwhile, Luke has been eating them.

diabl0

Okay, so the whiteflag hasn’t been thrown yet.. and look what we have here? another luke wilson ‘loser’ ads? I must say the rate of it changes from worse to worst.

I’m indifferent to these ads, but isn’t it a bit presumptuous (and quite narcissistic) to assert that simply because these celebrities aren’t relevant to you, they surely must not be important to anyone ?

T-Will

If T-Mobile were smart, they’d create an ad showing how consumers can use an iPhone on their network for less than half the monthly service cost of AT&T.